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Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

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Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#141

Post by betterunix2 »

rowanseymour wrote: post #109
betterunix2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should they have negotiated with the Palestinian Authority, which only partially controls the West Bank, or with Hamas, which took control of Gaza and proceeded to murder leaders from other Palestinian political parties? It is kind of hard to know who the "official" representatives of the Palestinian people actually are due to the failure to establish a functional Palestinian state or government.

> the failure to establish a functional Palestinian state or government. Wonder whose fault you think it is that the Palestinians who currently live under what HRW and several Israeli human rights organizations consider apartheid, don't have a state.

I think it is the fault of Hamas, which derailed the peace process 15 years ago after running a political campaign that delegitimized the peace process itself (they claimed that it was actually terrorism, not diplomacy and negotiated deals, that had caused the Israelis to withdraw from Gaza). As I said, their first move after taking control of Gaza was to murder political opponents. They fought a civil war against Fatah that almost caused a total collapse of the PA, and ever since the PA has been barely functional.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#142

Post by jcranmer »

sequoia wrote: post #134

Tangentially related but where does this come from and why is it so widely repeated (as in this article): > ...Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world I've seen this claim (both in the "one of the most..." and " the #1 most..." forms) many times and I don't know where it comes from. What am I missing? Here[0] wikipedia says Gaza Strip has ~5,046/sqkm. I thought maybe Gaza City was meant, it's dens…

You're probably missing this listing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

Where Gaza listed as its own country, it would be one of the densest, since it's basically a city and its urban sprawl and nothing more (like the other densest entries on the list). Of course, Gaza is itself arguably only part of Palestine, but the West Bank itself is pretty dense (see how high Palestine ranks on that list).

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#143

Post by gruez »

captainmuon wrote: post #115
squeaky-clean wrote: post #97

Not really related to the article at hand, but I've been on a bit of a Google Maps binge the past couple weeks. I learned a few interesting facts, blurry Israel being one of them. Another strange thing I found that might not be super well known (I didn't know about it) is that all GPS data in China is offset by a nonlinear psuedo-random amount. If you turn on the satellite view in Google Maps and look at various citi…

I've found that the maps match the GPS of my phone exactly, but the satellite pictures are shifted. Does that mean: 1) My GPS module also gives out obfuscated coordinates when in China or 2) Google uses shifted satellite images?

Neither. The satellite images are accurate, and so is your GPS readout. What's shifted is the official data that the government provides (eg. location of roads).

more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10964450

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#144

Post by tryonenow »

sequoia wrote: post #134

Tangentially related but where does this come from and why is it so widely repeated (as in this article): > ...Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world I've seen this claim (both in the "one of the most..." and " the #1 most..." forms) many times and I don't know where it comes from. What am I missing? Here[0] wikipedia says Gaza Strip has ~5,046/sqkm. I thought maybe Gaza City was meant, it's dens…

Palestinians and supporters of their side of the conflict have incentive to exaggerate their plight, as does Israel. When the media is sympathetic to one side (as it has been increasingly and especially during this latest conflict), it will rarely fact check its own. So certain white lies and embellishments are repeated and collectively they distort reporting without necessarily being outright false. This is not unique to reporting on the West Bank. And it's a major problem with US media especially - but you're not likely to find any "reputable" sources on the subject.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#145

Post by casefields »

billfruit wrote: post #88
deadalus wrote: post #5

Is it possible to have real-time live-feed of the entire planet? If cost isn't an issue, would something like that be possible?

Even for emergencies like flooding where it is very important to know which areas are flooded and which are not, I think presently there is no satellite based system which can give this information anywhere near realtime with anything close to the required resolution. So in the absence of such I assume the information will have to be gathered from ground reports and areal surveys, which I would think will be extremel…

Even the biggest of floods is a localized problem. A fleet of drones can give you live feeds of the entire thing. The caveat is of course the military has the best ones, and there's an uneasy balance of allowing military use on home soil.

Baltimore has been leading the charge on aerial surveillance: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-aerial-p...

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#146

Post by colechristensen »

manquer wrote: post #126

There is perhaps an interesting machine learning application here. There are higher resolution images available at lower frequencies and low resolution images possible with high frequency. Would it not possible to "zoom and enhance" a low resolution image to higher resolution one using historical high res data of the location and learning from object types and classification?

It is absolutely possible and there are plenty of ML and non-ML solutions for this or similar problems.

A set of useful keywords would be "image sensor fusion".

Of course there would be limitations and most of the image updates would be boring (all the buildings and streets are still there) or lacking enough information to retrieve anything (new set of cars parked on the street) so you'd end up with highlights and uncertainties for changes overlaid on top of high confidence existing infra.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#148

Post by gruez »

agnokapathetic wrote: post #138
manquer wrote: post #126

There is perhaps an interesting machine learning application here. There are higher resolution images available at lower frequencies and low resolution images possible with high frequency. Would it not possible to "zoom and enhance" a low resolution image to higher resolution one using historical high res data of the location and learning from object types and classification?

Yes: https://medium.com/the-downlinq/super-resolution-and-object-...

You're basically letting an AI to hallucinate details, which looks good in most cases but in edge cases may cause unintended results: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196650

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#149

Post by boringg »

dr_orpheus wrote: post #62
bawolff wrote: post #41

Im kind of confused - they're saying its a problem for reporters and people trying to investigate, but also that other providers provide high resolution imagery. I feel like both those things can't be true. How can it be a problem if you can just get the needed images from non usa companies?

Up-to-date high resolution imagery is quite expensive. Most of Google maps imagery is generated from an older database of images. Businesses like Maxar (formerly Digital Globe) that provide Earth imagery will sell a database of old out-of-date imagery for much cheaper. But more recent imagery is much more expensive because it is much more valuable. These companies will often provide free images that are up to date to…

Like all data -- new and high def data costs a lot more than something a couple years old. Data ages out.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#150

Post by wongarsu »

tpmx wrote: post #16
deadalus wrote: post #5

Is it possible to have real-time live-feed of the entire planet? If cost isn't an issue, would something like that be possible?

Maybe Starlink satellites should also feature a camera? They've already got the connectivity. You'd need a large constellation and this one seems like it will become huge.

They could do something like Sentinel's 10m/px, but looking at those images [1] I don't see the advantage of updating that more often than the once every few days we already have from Sentinel.

To make near-realtime interesting you need something closer to 1m/px where you can clearly make out cars. But at that point the optics and camera take more mass than a normal star link satellite. They would become earth observation satellites with an internet uplink, not the other way around.

1: https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/

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